Pakistan buying 150 railway engines in emergency

The News, 15 May 2010,

ISLAMABAD: The shortage of locomotives in the Pakistan Railways has reached such a crisis stage that an emergency plan to procure 150 engines from reliable international suppliers has been put together as the Chinese suppliers have failed to deliver, senior officials of Railways told The News.

General Manager Railways Shahid Ahmad on Thursday night confirmed to The News that the top Railways management had finally decided to drop the idea of acquiring 75 locomotives from the Chinese company as 32 previously supplied engines out of 69 have been scrapped after they became unserviceable.

The 75 locomotives were ordered from China after President Zardari himself intervened and forced the Railways to oblige the Chinese suppliers despite large-scale opposition within the Railways Ministry. Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour had gone on record against the Chinese suppliers but he was given a shut-up call.

The GM Railways disclosed that already an advertisement to purchase 150 locomotives has been published internationally and now the Railways will ensure that no substandard locomotives are procured.

Sources say the Chinese supplier has also refused to honour the warranty on these 32 locomotives as they are rotting in Railways sheds in Karachi and Lahore. Purchase of 69 sub-standard locomotives from China by spending billions of rupees was one of the initial mega corruption scandals against General Pervez Musharraf and his team.

However, vested interests succeeded to even get the present government fall in line and to award the contract of another 75 locomotives from the same Chinese company. “12 locomotives of 2,000 HP and 20 locomotives of 3,000 HP, all under warranty, have now been totally scrapped. There is no way that these could be used and a great loss has been inflicted on the national exchequer,” GM Shahid said.

He added: “The total cost of these locomotives has proved to be very high as these outdated engines have a very high maintenance cost. Whenever we want to change a very important device in the engine, a turbo super charger, it become out of order within two to three months because of inferior quality of the engine and causes unbearable loss to the locomotive itself.”

The senior Railways official revealed that 15 per cent advance amount has already been paid to the Chinese company and now a letter has been sent to them seeking a reply within 14 days regarding complete breakdown of the 32 locomotives costing Pakistan billions of rupees.

He said after receiving the reply of this letter proceedings to get back 15 per cent advance amount would be initiated. He said the Pakistan Railways needs sturdy and tough diesel engines as it runs services on long routes from Karachi to Peshawar which also include hilly areas.

The GM said the Pakistan Railways is in dire need of the engines otherwise the whole railway system was going to collapse. The Pakistan Railways procured 69 locomotives from China in 2001 which were technically approved by the then management of Pakistan Railways in spite of excessive axle load. These locomotives did not perform very well and had developed lot of major faults that caused huge revenue losses. The cracking of underframe of more than 9 locomotives of 3,000 HP in 2005 is one example.

The Railways officials say in spite of this bad performance the previous Railways administration committed serious violations of tender conditions, PPRA Rules and international competitive bidding procedures and awarded the contract of another 75 locomotives to China. The recommendations of technical committee were ignored wherein they had disqualified the Chinese proposal thrice due to non-compliance of relevant clauses.